1. The use of pictures puts men at a huge disadvantage

Not many men have looks that immediately turn women on. Even the ‘hottest’ male celebrities are considered to be physically unattractive by many women. Women’s ideas about what a handsome man looks like vary wildly. Men are much more alike in this. What is a hot woman to one man will likely be at least a fairly attractive woman to other men as well. Men will give any woman with ok pictures a chance. Women will not return the favor. Most men need to show more than just their pictures. Women are attracted to what I will call ‘social credit’. They are attracted by status, power, money, humor, social skills, emotional intelligence, culture, artistic abilities, self-confidenc, ‘joie de vivre’, courage… The list goes on. ONE of these assets is probably not enough. So try to convey several of these qualities via pictures…. It’s not easy. Sure, you can write something very original in your profile, but the written word is not as convincing as pictures. And to show you have the above mentioned assets via a short text is a head scratcher. Plus, most men don’t even joy writing. That leaves them with unexciting pictures and a profile all women have read thousands of times before. Even worse, because men think women react the way men do they will have pictures showing off their muscles or posing like wannabe models. Women can pose for their Tinder pics. Men cannot. Their pics need to look like they weren’t aware their pic was being taken. It’s a hell of a lot harder for men to have attractive pics.

2. Female users are instantly overflooded with messages from desperate men

Because men like more profiles the female users get a lot of matches. Because men get less matches they will contact the few matches they have. Ergo: female users get bombarded with messages. Even the average looking ones. Of course the women are not going to react to every message they get. It would be too time consuming and just too boring to answer the same questions over and over again. It’s exciting to get to know new people, but not 100 at a time. So the male users are bound to get very, very frustrated.

The most attractive women will also not stay long. They have the pick of the litter. Within a week they have selected one or maybe more mates and they delete the app.

Or they get disgusted by the often hostile reactions from men who feel ignored and delete the app even before they get a match. And let’s be honest. What gorgeous woman needs a dating app to get male attention??

In the end the males use the app with a specific end in mind: sex. Women use it more out of curiosity or to find a serious relationship or to get an ego boost. With such mismatched intentions frustration is bound to follow, but for the men. The women will appreciate the attention and laugh off the males’s frustrations.

Men are rarely good at talking to women. Even when they are good at talking to women they do so in a way that gets them friendzoned. There’s being good at talking to women and there is being good at talking to women into bed. Those are two very different things. And most men are not good at either.

I believe most men just end up getting married to the first sort of attractive woman that happens to encourage their initiative…. Meaning that women select their partner and men get selected. They go after the women that gave them some encouragement to do so.

3. The app is hunting the money from its male users, not its female users

There is really no reason for women to pay for apps like this. The way dating apps work gives them so many opportunities to get matches without lifting a finger (almost) they are fine with the basic functions the apps gives to users for free.

Because men are at a huge disadvantage it makes sense to them to pay for extra features. They like more profiles so it makes sense to get rid of limitations to how many profiles they can like in a day. The main benefit of paying is that their profile will be shown to more women which at least increases their chances to get matches, but not by much since their profile will probably not trigger much.

A big downside of this business model is that a male’s profile will quickly sink into oblivion when the user is not paying. After some weeks of not paying the app bans your profile to the bottom drawer. The user will blame this on his own unattractiveness, but it’s really the way the app works. It wants your money.

The app works according to the Matthew principle. The app wants to show its female users atractive profiles to keep them going. So the minority of men who instantly upon joining get lots of likes are then shown to lots of women. This makess them get more likes. This puts the average male user at a big disadvantage. With the odds already stacked against them they now have to compete with a minority of very succesful male profiles. This makes the first day you are active on the app your most important day which will determine the rest of your ‘life’ on the app. It’s a hit or miss game and most men will miss. They can do something to beat the odds, but not much. They are unlikely to get what they are after using the app.

Even when they do get matches they will probably get matches with women they only find sort of attractive. The leftovers. Team B. Not the male’s first choice.

It’s just set up to be a very frustrating experience for males.

In ‘real’ life men can do much more to boost their attractiveness than on a dating app.